Stand face to face with your god
She is drawn inexplicably to the stars.
And they to her.
She emerges from the deep forest long after the sun has gone down. And she is young, you can tell it just by looking at her, but she burns just as the stars above. The stars in her mane and tail pulse and flicker and the deep orange of her nebulous wings seems to glow even brighter in this true darkness.
Perhaps it is vain, the way she sidles closer to the water’s edge so that she might catch her reflection in it. There is some pleased sound deep in the cage of her chest as she studies the lines of her fine head, wondering if she looks anything like the father who’d perished before her birth.
But these are not things worth dwelling on and she wades into the water. It is viciously cold, licking at her sides, but she likes how the stars look trapped beneath the surface. Their light shimmering with the current. It gets her wondering about ice. And for all her want to know what it is to burn, she also aches to know what it is to freeze.
It is not long before the teeth begin to chatter, the muscles trembling and seizing beneath the surface of her skin. The mouth curls around some secret smile as she lingers there in the current, reveling in the way the water tries so valiantly to erode her. Perhaps she will let it.
